저자: CharlieMunger · 외국인
요약 보기
Munger는 투자 판단은 공식보다 일반적 원칙과 판단력 향상에 달렸다고 주장하며, 기계지능이 투자 자본배분에 큰 기여를 하지 못할 것이라고 봤다. 중국 시장은 버크셔가 놓치고 있는 기회로 인정했으나 규모 때문에 대규모 투자가 어렵다고 설명했다(유럽 3% 보고 규정, PetroChina 사례). 기술주는 Apple 외에는 역량 범위 밖으로 보고 Google·Amazon은 판단 실수였다고 인정했다. 전반적으로 특정 종목의 단기 가격 방향에 대한 발언은 없었다.
다듬은 글
Generally speaking, we're always trying to get the best to get something that's worth buying. And the human mind rejects that if you're in academia because you could come in and make one declaratory sentence at the opening of the semester and you wouldn't anything to do for the rest of the of your time.
So people want to find some formula. It's what I call physics envy. These people want the world to be like physics. But the world isn't like physics outside of physics. And that false precision just does nothing but get you in trouble. So I would I would say you got to master the general ideas and you've got to work to improve your judgment slowly the way all the rest of us had.
And I I don't think most individuals have much hope of individual gain from machine intelligence. Now I don't I'm impressed when machines beat go or something of this sort or even win the chess or whatever it may be. I don't really think they bring much to the table in terms of capital allocation or investing.
And then I may be missing something entirely. You know, maybe I'm just blind to what's out there. You're missing a lot of very remuning twaddle. Well, well, that takes care of that. So, we'll go on to station eight. You mentioned earlier that investors don't really have to be struggling in picking the right stocks.
They would do well in picking probably the right market or the right country. China is the second largest economy and probably has the biggest growth potential. Just by passively weighting a portfolio, by passively valuating a portfolio, US investors are significantly underweighting China. So in your opinion, what are stopping the investors from investing in China?
Thank you. Well, I think the answer is that you're absolutely right that we are American investors are missing China and they're missing it because it's a long way away. It looks different. They're not used to it. It's complicated. The headlines confuse them. In other words, it it just looks too hard sitting in Omaha to to outsmart the Chinese market.
But I think you're absolutely right. It's where they should be looking. Okay, we've actually had a couple investments in China. We actually we we've done pretty well but uh there were you know the well if you go back number of years one page uh in terms of getting a lot of money into something you know many billions and we have to get billions into things to to move any kind of a needle that that can be tougher in in markets that uh that you've got you're unfamiliar working in.
And it's it's difficult under any circumstances, but but accumulating a six or eight or 10 billion dollar position in investments outside the United States can be very difficult. For example, in in UK and much of Europe, we have to report when we own 3% of a company. In fact, we can be asked to report if we even have less than 3%.
that media gets very tough when we get a bunch of followers and a lot of publicity that probably isn't deserved in terms of what we're doing in the markets and everything. So, it uh some of the problems are just by the nature of our size. It would be a lot it it'd be a lot easier for running smaller fund.
Petrochina, we managed to get a very big position, but the government owned 90% of it. So, we bought 14% of what the government didn't own, but it was still only 1.4% of the company. Uh um but Charlie Charlie actually keeps pushing me to do more in China and we've tried a couple of times actually and there was there was one operation that we got involved in.
Well, you did so poorly the first time you put in 200,000 and got about two billion. So, yeah. Well, wasn't encouraging enough. Okay, station nine. Uh, my name is uh Dr. Sherman Silver. I'm an infertility doctor from St. Louis and uh I uh been a shareholder in coming to this meeting for 23 years and I want to thank you very much for making my grandchildren very rich.
and and they sometimes compare me in the medical world to infertility uh world as the uh Berkshire pathway of infertility because I'm so old and I come from a relatively small community. But uh I'm wondering about your interest in not just Apple but all of the tech stocks like Amazon and Google because you've avoided them.
You've stated in the past because they're complicated. you should stick with something you understand. On the other hand, Amazon and Google have what you call a very durable competitive advantage. They really hardly have any competitor and that's true in China too of Alibaba and Tencent. So, it seems like it's a conflict and I'm wondering if you're going to be turning the corner and going into these tech companies that seem to have no serious competition.
Well, we certainly look at them and we we we don't think of whether we should be in tech companies or not or that sort of thing. We we are looking for things where we we do get into the durability of the competitive advantage and whether we think that our opinion might be better than other people's opinion in assessing the probability of the durability so to speak.
Uh but the truth is that uh I've watched Amazon from the start. And I I think what Jeff Bezos has has done is something close to a miracle. And and the problem is if I think something will be a miracle, I tend not to bet on it. The uh uh it would have been better, far better. Obviously, if we if I had some insights into certain businesses, but you know, in fact, Bill told me early on, Bill Gates told me early on, you know, that that I think I was on all the Vist and he suggested I turn to Google, but the trouble is I I saw that Google was was uh was skipping past all the Vista and then I wondered if anybody could skip past Google.
And I saw at Geo that we were paying a lot of money for something that cost them nothing incrementally. So we've looked at it and you know I made a mistake and and and in and not being able to come to a conclusion where I really felt that that at the present prices that that the prospects were far better than the prices indicated.
And uh uh I didn't go into Apple because it was a tech stock in the least. I mean that I went at Apple because I made certain came to certain conclusions about about both the intelligence was with the capital would be employed but more important about the value of an ecosystem and how permanent that ecosystem could be and what the threats were to it and a whole bunch of things and uh that didn't I don't think that required me to you know take apart an iPhone or something and figure out what all the components were or anything it it was more it's much more the nature of consumer behavior and some things uh strike me as having a lot more permits than others.
But the answer is we'll miss a lot of things that or I'll miss a lot of things that that I don't feel I understand well enough. And there's there there is no penalty in investing if you don't swing a ball that's in the strike zone. as long as you swing at something at some point and you know eventually that you find the pitch pitches you like and that's the way we'll continue to do it.
We'll try to stay within our circle of competence and and uh Charlie and I generally agree on on uh sort of where that circle ends and uh what what kind of situations where we might have some kind of an edge in our reasoning or our experience or something that uh where we might evaluate something differently than other people.
But the answer is uh we're going to miss a lot of things. Charlie, yeah, we have a wonderful system. If one of us is stupid in some area, so is the other. And of course, we were not ideally located to be high-tech wizards. You know, how many people of our age quickly mastered Google? I've been to Google headquarters.
They look to me like they're It looks like a kindergarten. A very rich kindergarten. Yes. It's impressive what they've done. And uh like I say at the Geico, we were paying them a lot of money. Uh at the time they went public and and and all three of them, the main characters, Eric, sorry, and Sergey, uh they actually came and saw me, but they were more in talking about going public and the mechanics of it and various things along that line.
But it wasn't like what they were doing was a mystery to me. The mystery was how much competition would come along and how effective they would be uh and whether it would be a game where four or five people were slugging it out without making as much money as they could if one company dominated. Those are those are tough decisions to make.
You can have industries where there's only two people in it and they still aren't very very good because they beat each other's brains out. And that's one of the questions in the airline business. It's is a better business now than it used to be but that used to be suicide. So uh and you know that the competitive influ competitive factors are are extraordinary in in airlines and how much better business is it with with uh four people operating at 85% capacity than it was at with seven or eight operating in the mid70s and with more planes around.
Those are tough decisions, but uh I made the wrong decision on on Google and Amazon. I just I really consider that a miracle that you could be doing Amazon web services and and changing retail at the same time uh with relative, you know, without enormous amounts of capital and do it with the speed and effectiveness of what Amazon has done.
I just I would I underestimated uh I had a very very very high opinion of Jeff ability when I first met him and I underestimated him. Charlie. Well, my comment would be that the shareholders have one thing to be thankful for. Some of the age related stupidity at headquarters has been ameliorated by Ted and Todd joining us.
We are looking at the world with the aid of some younger eyes now and they've had a contribution significant beyond their own investments and so you're you're very lucky to have them you shareholders because there's a lot of ignorance in the older generation that needs removal.
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